


They'll Hang Us In The Louvre (down the back, but who cares, still The Louvre)

by ninetyfive



Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Art School, Falling In Love, Life Drawing, Love at First Sight, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Porn with some plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 22:07:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21106775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninetyfive/pseuds/ninetyfive
Summary: "Robbie Williams is so delightful and real that when Mark heads to the front of the atelier to grab a condom from his bag, he actually stops to pick up his sketchbook. He’s overcome with a sudden rush of creativity that he needs to get out of his system.Yes, they’re in the middle of something. Yes, all the other students have already left. Yes, they’re supposed to make love. Yes, Mark has already taken off his clothes, wearing nothing but his white Calvin Klein boxers. Yes, he’s supposed to be kissing the man in front of him – and yet the only thing Mark wants to do is to sketch him."Mark didn’t think the cute lad he met at the tram stop that morning would turn out to be the nude model at his life drawing lessons, but sometimes the world moves in mysterious ways.





	They'll Hang Us In The Louvre (down the back, but who cares, still The Louvre)

**Author's Note:**

> The art school mentioned in this story is not the same art school I have been writing about in other stories. I just really like writing about art and art schools because I'm still traumatised by getting kicked out of art school.

Mark thinks drawing faces is the most difficult bit. That’s why he prefers to draw people from behind; that way, he won’t have to deal with giving his figures weird-looking faces with all the important bits in the wrong places. Mark would only end up giving them dots for eyes, anyway.

Right now, Mark is making yet another drawing of someone’s back. His current victim is a tall lad with short black hair. Surrounded by people at the local tram stop, the lad is completely oblivious to Mark attempting to draw him. Mark starts out with the head (just a couple of lines), then drags his pencil down the page. He jots down a couple of sharp lines: the lad’s right arm, holding up a phone. Mark rather messes up the hand: it looks like a claw. The lad has his left hand stuck inside his pocket, which means Mark won’t have to bother drawing it.

A yellow tram has just whizzed past at the other side of the station. Where it is going, Mark does not know. He doesn’t care. All that matters to him is getting the shape of the stranger’s back right on paper.

Mark’s drawing instructor – Mr Vernon – would probably say that this is a pretty easy pose, but nothing is easy to Mark. He finds almost every position of the human body extremely puzzling. For there the lad is, with his right arm raised at just an angle, his left shoulder slumped just slightly, his body much taller than all the other people at the station, and yet Mark cannot for the life of him get his sketch to look like what he’s seeing in front of him. It’s like his hand and brain are not connected.

Then again, Mark’s only been attending the amateur drawing lessons at the local art school for about six or seven weeks. He’s got a long way to go before he’ll finally leave the lessons feeling confident about his art.

So far, everything he’s drawn or sketched has been disappointingly average.

He does love the lessons, though. They take place twice every week. On Tuesdays, they work on theory and technique; on Fridays, they’ll draw a life model. As in, a nude model. A model who isn’t wearing any clothes.

Not even any underpants.

Mark thought it was a bit weird at first, to be honest. He’s seen naked people before, of course, but being actively invited to stare at a naked body and think about how it moves is really quite different from seeing a lover getting naked, or watching yourself in the mirror before taking a shower. It’s _weird. _Every week, Mark finds himself staring at yet another naked body, wondering how to draw a pair of tits without offending someone, or struggling when he reaches the part of the drawing when he has to draw someone’s willy.

To this day, he still doesn’t know whether he’s actually _supposed _to draw the willy.

Thankfully, you get kind of used to it after a while. Once you get over the initial embarrassment, you quickly realise that drawing someone naked is just like drawing a bowl of fruit, or that time they were asked to draw a pineapple using just a piece of charcoal. It’s just another object to put on a canvas, nothing more.

Today is Friday, so Mark’s lesson will be another life drawing session. Keen to get a bit of practice before heading to school, Mark has been sat on a cold little bench at his local tram stop for the past half hour, drawing unsuspecting commuters. His lesson doesn’t even start until forty minutes from now. He just felt like drawing strangers, and trying to find beauty in the way some people hold themselves. He didn’t notice before how completely different each person’s posture is, or how some people have legs that are much taller than his. Picking up drawing has made him see the world in a way he didn’t think was possible before. Everywhere he goes, he sees lines and shapes and little nuances in colour; things that give the world its distinct character.

If only drawing those lines, shapes and nuances wasn’t so very difficult.

Mark’s about to add the finishing touches to his current sketch when his unwitting model suddenly puts away his phone and looks right at him. If Mark were to make a sketch of this exact moment, he might draw a tall lad looking extremely puzzled and perturbed. A sketch made just a second later would feature the same boy staring right at Mark’s _sketchbook_.

‘Were you just drawing _me_, mate?’

Mark’s heart skips a beat. Remembering a previous incident when an elderly lady had gotten very mad at Mark for drawing _her_, he flips to the previous page: a quick sketch of the tram stop he made a couple of minutes ago. It looks way out of perspective, but he shows it to the Tall Lad anyway. ‘I – I wasn’t drawing you at all. I was drawing the tram s-stop, see? It isn’t very good. But I wasn’t drawing _you_, I promise.’

‘I’m not _blind_, mate. You were obviously sketching me. I could see it with me own two eyes!’ And the lad points at his own two eyes as though he feels like he has to demonstrate that he does, indeed, have two eyes.

Mark’s spent quite a lot of time drawing strangers in public, and he’s learned the hard way that many people think that being sketched without them knowing is like when you take a sneaky picture of them. People don’t like it. They think it’s an invasion of privacy. Even when the drawing you made of them looks nothing like the real thing, they’ll still ask you to get rid of it.

Mark quickly realises that Tall Lad isn’t like one of those people. He doesn’t look angry or upset – in fact, he looks positively curious. Mark can see it in the way he’s holding himself: big green eyes; his body leaning ever so slightly forward (very difficult to draw, that); his gaze pointed right at the sketchbook in Mark’s hands. It’s the first time anyone outside of Mark’s life drawing lessons has shown any kind of interest in his art.

It’s the first time in ages that anyone has ever shown any kind of interest in _him_.

‘W-would you like to see it? The sketch? Would you like to – have a look at it?’ Mark finds that his words are coming out even more stammered than usual. Mark likes talking, and doing a lot of it, and yet he seems to be extremely bad at it.

‘_Would I like to see it?_’ Tall Lad reiterates. Two pink spots have appeared on his cheeks. ‘Mate. Of _course _I’d like to see it. No-one’s ever drawn me in public before! That is, I’ve been drawn many times in public before. People just can’t seem to stop. What I mean is, no-one’s ever drawn me without me not _knowing _before. Though I guess I know about it _now. _You know what I mean?’

Mark does not know what Tall Lad means, for he’s talking very quickly, and he’s not making any sense. 

‘Anyway,’ Tall Lad goes on, in his same talking-very-quickly way that even a professional artist would find hard to translate into a decent artwork, ‘I _would _like to see your sketch, if you may. I’m actually surprisingly knowledgeable when it comes to art. I’m a bit of an _expert _when it comes to the human form, I’ll have you know_._’

Mark raises his eyebrows. Tall Lad looks a bit too young to be an art teacher. (His current drawing teacher, Vernon, is almost fifty, which means he’s absolutely ancient.) ‘Really? So you draw too?’

‘Something like that,’ the stranger says vaguely. The way he smiles makes Mark wish he could draw faces after all. There’s something very sort of boyish about it; boyish, but also handsome, with all the important parts of the face in the right place. His eyes are a sort of dark green (Mark was sick when Vernon did a special lesson about colour, so he doesn’t know the right term for it), and his lips are pink and soft-looking. He’s not sure if “soft-looking” is something you should think when drawing someone, but “soft-looking” is the first thing that comes to his mind when looking at this stranger’s lips.

‘I won’t make fun of you,’ Tall Lad promises. Meanwhile, another tram stops at the station behind them. Most of the people at the station embark, leaving the two young lads to continue this bizarre conversation alone. ‘Unless the drawing is really crap and stuff, then I might make fun of you inside me head. But I won’t_ tell_ you, I swear.’

Mark thinks about what is happening. He’s been sat at this tram stop for the past thirty minutes, just drawing and sketching and erasing the bits of his drawings he didn’t like. No-one has looked at him. No-one has seen him sketching. No-one has struck up a conversation with him. No-one but _this_ guy, with his tall frame that you could easily jot down in just a few lines, and those twinkling green eyes that Mark wouldn’t be able to sketch for the life of him.

When you draw, it feels like you’re always the one doing the staring. You’re constantly looking; frantically trying to jot down an arm or a leg before the person in front of you moves into another position. This time, _Mark’s _the one being looked at. _He’s _being seen. _He’s _the one who’s become the focal point of a new and unfamiliar artwork.

And when the person looking at you is as intriguing and soft and tall as this stranger, your heart will always, inevitably, explode into a spectrum of colours. Mark has fallen in love before he’s even noticed it.

‘Tell me your name first,’ Mark says, as his heart does a weird dance inside his chest. He’s never felt his heart dancing like this before. He adds, ‘_Please_,’ and clutches his sketchbook tighter to his chest. This lad is making him feel very strange inside.

‘The name’s Rob,’ says Tall Lad. He holds out a small hand. ‘Drawing expert.’

‘M-Mark. Mark Owen,’ says Mark. He shakes Rob’s hand, and he would swear he felt a tiny spark then. ‘Not such a drawing expert, I’m afraid.’

Mark hesitates, then opens his sketchbook on the right page. He shows Rob the drawing he made, his heart hammering inside his throat. Rob scans the sketch as if he is an art curator at a museum: a serious expression on his face; eyes narrowed. He nods a couple of times and makes an exaggerated show of stroking his chin.

‘Not bad, not bad . . . nice lines, here and there. Good proportions. I don’t really think you’ve captured me handsome persona, though, Mark,’ Rob jests. ‘I’m nowhere near as average-looking as this.’

Mark flushes. He glances at his own sketch, then sizes up the stranger in a darting glance. He has to conclude that Rob is, indeed, much more handsome than his drawing would suggest.

Realising that makes a hot flush rise up Mark’s neck. He has the sudden urge to avert his gaze, not really looking at either his sketch or at Rob, the self-professed drawing expert.

‘I do like it, though,’ says Rob. ‘The body parts are in all the right place. But I don’t think it really looks like me.’

‘H-how would I – how _would_ I get it to – to look like you?’ Mark stammers. He hazards another look at the stranger, but he just finds himself staring at those soft pink lips again, and wondering how he might draw them and if they are as soft as they look. He averts his gaze to his knees. ‘I’d really like to get better, but I – I sort of seem stuck. I feel like there’s a t-trick I’m missing.’

‘Just make sure you use your eyes and stuff,’ says Rob, as though it’s obvious. ‘You have to really _look_ at people.’

‘Is that what _you’d _do? As – as someone who’s really good at art?’

Rob shrugs. ‘I suppose. If I was trying to draw _you_, I wouldn’t be able to stop looking at you either. You know what I mean? I’d keep looking. Mostly cos you’re seriously handsome, obviously. But also because that’s what drawing teachers always say.’

Mark’s face feels like it’s burning up. A guy _he _thinks is handsome has just called him handsome. Rob thinks he’s handsome. Rob, the most handsome stranger Mark has ever seen. Rob, with his soft-looking lips and those green eyes that make him wish he could name every single shade of green.

Looking at Rob fills Mark with a sudden surge of bravery. ‘If y-you think I’m so handsome, then why don’t you give me y-your phone number?’ he blurts out, turning even redder in the process. 

Rob’s soft-looking lips curl into a smile. A wide, toothy smile. Mark almost melts. ‘Actually, Mark, I think I just might. You got a pen I could borrow?’

Mark sheepishly holds up his sketchbook and pencil, wondering what on Earth is happening. He can’t remember the last time meeting a stranger made his legs turn into jelly, and he also can’t remember the last time he asked for someone’s number. Not because he hasn’t met any cute guys lately, but, well, you can’t really ask for someone’s number while you’re busy dancing in a club. That’s how Mark meets most guys. And some girls. Mostly guys, these days.

So, basically, meeting a cute guy after you’ve just spent five minutes trying to draw them at a tram stop is pretty weird. Really, really weird. It just does_ not_ happen. It happens only in stories and movies. And yet here Mark is, watching a total stranger – a handsome stranger – writing down his number in his sketchbook.

Rob has scribbled his phone number next to Mark’s sketch. He looks it over twice as if to check whether the number is correct (Rob is very bad with numbers and writing things down), then hands back the sketchbook. ‘There. Me number. That’s a _one_, by the way – not a seven. Sometimes people get confused.’

Mark looks at the number in his sketchbook as though he’s just been given an ancient artefact. ‘T-thanks. _Um_ . . .’ He doesn’t really know what to say now. He’s not used to exchanging numbers when meeting handsome guys at tram stops, so this very much feels like the end of their conversation.

For lack of a better idea, Mark decides to ask Rob why he’s here and where he’s going. Looking at Rob still makes Mark feel a very weird way inside, so he continues staring at his knees. ‘So, _erm_. Why – where are you headed?’

Rob rubs his nose. ‘Nowhere in particular. You know, shopping and stuff.’

‘Oh. Okay. That’s nice.’

‘You?’

‘Yeah, same. Shopping.’ Mark doesn’t really feel like telling Rob that he’s going to attend a life drawing lesson, because so far their entire conversation has revolved around drawing.

Mark doesn’t have it in him to make up a lie about which shop he’s going to and what he’s going to buy, so their conversation pauses yet again. Even though they’ve just exchanged phone numbers, Mark feels so bloody nervous being around Rob that can’t come up with anything else to say. Similarly, Rob thinks Mark is so impossibly adorable that _he _can’t think of anything to say either. It’s a miracle they even got talking.

The lads watch the yellow trams passing by in quasi-awkward silence until Rob suddenly announces that his tram is about to arrive. They exchange some awkward goodbyes (with Rob nearly walking into a lamppost because Mark smiled at him in a certain way), and ten seconds later Mark watches Rob disappearing into a yellow tram that has just arrived.

It’s not until Mark watches the tram disappearing behind a corner that he realises he forgot to ask Rob if he’s allowed to call him tonight. Rob has disappeared so suddenly and so quickly that he almost feels as if their conversation never even happened.

For a couple of minutes, staring at the world passing him by in perfect three-point perspective, Mark becomes genuinely convinced that he dreamt it all up. You don’t meet handsome strangers with soft-looking lips at a tram stop. Handsome strangers don’t ask you to show them your art, and they certainly don’t give you their phone number. You meet strangers in a club, where you’ll hardly breathe a word to each other.

Except there’s clearly a phone number next to the sketch Mark made, and his heart is still beating like mad. Did he just start fancying a stranger?

He’s just started fancying a stranger.

***

Mark arrives late at his drawing lesson that day. He’s the last person to set up his easel at the lesson location, a spacious atelier with artworks covering every inch of the walls. The atelier is on the top floor of a well-respected art college just half an hour away from where Mark lives. As well as providing amateur courses for hobbyists like Mark, the college also provides full-time Bachelor degrees for people who are more serious about art. His teacher, Vernon, only teaches there twice a week. He spends the rest of his time working as a professional artist. 

Mark arrived so late that he completely missed Mr Vernon’s instructions. Mark is an inherently disoriented and lost person, so he feels even more disoriented and lost than usual. After he’s set up his things, he feels an overwhelming sense of missed-the-memo. Looking around him, he can see that all his course-mates are holding a small piece of charcoal. (_Oh no, I _hate_ charcoal_, Mark thinks to himself.) Other than that, he hasn’t a clue what’s going on. Mr Vernon is nowhere to be seen, and everyone’s sort of . . . staring at their canvases? By the looks of it, no-one has actually sketched anything yet. He doesn’t see the nude model yet either.

Maybe today is a “technique” day after all?

Mark taps the shoulder of the girl next to him. Her name is Letisha, and she’s got curly brown hair and extremely long legs. If you were to draw her, you’d only have to jot down a couple of long lines moving down the paper. Her art is so good that Mark reckons she shouldn’t be taking amateur classes at all. ‘Letisha. Hallo. Hi. _Erm_, what’s – what’s going on? Why is no-one doing anything? I haven’t missed something important, have I?’

‘It’s today’s model,’ says Letisha. She admires her nails. ‘He accidentally broke the heater before we could draw anything.’

Mark looks at the small podium in the middle of the atelier: the place where there ought to be a model. There’s also supposed to be a small heater to keep the model warm, but today it seems to be missing. Mark wouldn’t want to pose naked in a chilly classroom without a heater either.

‘What do we do now?’ he asks Letisha. ‘Is the lesson still going ahead? Is today going to be a lesson on technique? Oh, I hope not. I’m awful at technique. I could hardly draw that hairbrush last time. I know Vernon wants us to get better at drawing different kinds of textures and things like that, but I haven’t got a clue how to do it, to be honest.’

‘Same here,’ says Letisha, even though she is the best student Mr Vernon has. ‘I hate technique too. Oh, look, here they are now. _Fab._ Looks like they found a working heater after all.’

Letisha is so tall that she can easily peek over her easel to see Mr Vernon and the model returning to the atelier, but Mark is rather short, so he can’t see anything. From his angle, stood in the back of the room, a large window to his right (overlooking the road outside), the only thing he can make out is the podium right in front of him, and a dozen easels and students obscuring the rest of the view. This is why, when he suddenly sees the tall stranger he met that morning sitting down on the podium in front of him, _naked_ – so very naked that he isn’t even wearing any underpants –, Mark completely freezes.

Today’s model is _Rob_. As in, the boy he’s been thinking about ever since they met. As in, the guy he fancies.

Oh dear.

‘Students! You have fifteen minutes to work out a charcoal sketch!’ This comes from Mr Vernon, the drawing instructor. He likes ending each sentence with an exclamation mark. ‘I want perfect anatomy! I want detail! I want exquisite shadow work! Go!’

Mr Vernon keeps shouting things he wants his students to do. Mark stopped listening to Mr Vernon after three seconds, because the world as he knew it has stopped.

He audibly yelps and drops his piece of charcoal in slow-motion.

A couple of faces turn to look at him.

Letisha rolls her eyes.

He feels the hands of time ticking down inside his bones as he begs the model – _Rob _– not to look at him. As long as Rob doesn’t turn his head and spots him . . . perhaps Rob will never see him, and Mark will be able to pretend this never happened.

He could even go. Mark could leave. He could pretend he has something better to do. He could escape the country.

It’s already too late. Rob tilts his head ever so slightly, directing his green-eyed gaze right at Mark, and the light in the atelier catches his expression perfectly.

Rob’s face goes through a dozen expressions in the same time it takes Mark to drop his piece of charcoal. There’s surprise, then dread, then perfectly practiced _poise_. Rob moves his head in an infinitesimal nod, just as every head turns to look at Mark, and he closes his eyes. Only the flush rising up the model’s cheeks would suggest that he’s just seen someone he recognises.

All of this happens in a flash. The moment Mark’s piece of charcoal hits the floor, Mr Vernon starts barking at him. ‘Matthew! The moment the model arrives, we draw! Less dropping your things, please, and more making art!’ Mr Vernon doesn’t know Mark’s name. 

Mark stammers, ‘Y-yes, Mr Vernon, Sir, of c-course,’ and he does as he’s told. He’s trembling so much that he drops his piece of charcoal again. Letisha rolls her eyes again. Vernon barks yet more orders at him.

Rob has done Mark the courtesy of turning his head, but this does not make things Less Awkward. Now Mark understands what Rob meant when he said he was a “drawing” expert, and why he said, “no-one’s ever drawn me without me not _knowing_ before.” The hints were there along. Art is all about paying attention, and looking – _really _looking – and yet Mark continues to be clueless.

‘Martin!’ More orders from Mr Vernon. ‘You have not done any sketching yet! Drawings don’t make themselves! Try harder!’

‘Yes, Mr Vernon. Sorry, Mr Vernon.’

Mark doesn’t have a choice. He’ll have to draw. Unfortunately, drawing means _staring_, which means he’ll have to stare at Rob. Naked.

Trying his hardest not to let his eyes stray lower down until he absolutely has to, Mark starts with Rob’s head. He jots it down in a couple of shaky lines that Mr Vernon would tell him “need work”.

Then the neck. Two lines.

His strokes move lower down as his gaze moves towards Rob’s chest, covered in tattoos. He can sketch it in just a couple of quick lines – no need to contour or shade anything, because Rob hasn’t got that many muscles. (Realising this makes Mark’s heart beat very fast, because God knows how much he loves boys who haven’t got that many muscles.)

Rob’s arms end up looking like two long branches sticking out of a tree, with claws for hands.

He takes a deep breath. He’s done the easy bit.

Once again, Mark’s drawing doesn’t quite capture the beauty of the real thing. In real life, Rob is absolutely gorgeous. It makes Mark want to make the best ever artwork, but he also feels something else; a deep, hungry _need_ that makes Mark bite his lip when he rubs his hand up and down his paper, smoothing out the charcoal to create a sense of light and dark.

Mark doesn’t know how to recreate this, but the light in the atelier casts smooth shadows in all the right places of Rob’s body. All the angles in his body are soft and gentle, like they’re one continuous line. Unfortunately, the incarnation of Rob that Mark is drawing ends up looking all square and hard and not soft at all.

Mark gives up on trying to make Rob’s chest look good. He’s forced to go lower. He slows down his strokes. His piece of charcoal hovers in front of his canvas as he struggles to draw the next bit: two swallow tattoos on Rob’s flat tummy, pointing straight at – _well_. The part of the body that Mark always dreads drawing most.

Rationally, Mark knows that Rob is just here as a model, and that therefore drawing Rob is just like drawing a pineapple or a hairbrush or an apple or a stranger at a tram stop. Once you get over that initial seeing-someone-naked-at-a-life-drawing-lesson embarrassment, you realise that the human body is nothing to be ashamed of, and that it is as much of a work of art as a painting of a bowl of fruit. Drawing the human body is something Mark would love to get better at, for he might understand the world better as a result.

But looking at Rob in front of him, completely naked, his skin a little red in all the right places, a blush spreading across his face . . . Mark can’t help but wish he could immortalise what he’s seeing in front of him in a way that doesn’t involve pencils or charcoal. Is that awful of him? Is he now going to hell? Yes. Probably. All of those things.

Then again, he started fancying Rob way before he saw him naked, so it’s not like he fancies Rob_ just_ for his body. He likes Rob for many things: his kindness, and his voice, and the way his eyes lit up when Mark showed him his artwork at the tram stop.

Rob having an amazing body does help, though. Just a little bit.

***

For the remainder of the lesson, Mark’s mood swings back and forth like a pendulum. There are fleeting moments when he feels perfectly fine having to draw his brand new crush without any clothes on, but then his eyes flick at the parts of Rob’s body he likes most, and he’ll feel anxious all over again. His art suffers greatly as a result: most of his sketches are dodgy, with the lines not joining up in the right places.

He, alone, seems to struggle. Everyone else’s drawings are beautiful, but his aren’t. His drawings look like they were made by a five-year-old. It frustrates him tremendously. He _knows _what it takes to make a good artwork. He _knows _that creating art is all about looking. Watching. Observing. It is about asking yourself difficult questions. Where is Rob’s left hand in relation to his other one? Should he draw the bead of sweat trickling down Rob’s chest? Where do his legs meet up with the rest of his body? Should he draw the tattoos on Rob’s fingers, or spare those details for when he’s become a better artist?

Mark doesn’t know. He _looks_, but he finds no answers. He discards sketch after sketch, throwing them aside on a dirty table behind him. This is why, when Mr Vernon announces a break at five p.m. precisely, the only thing Mark has to show for is a crap sketch on his easel: a bare-bones representation of the man he’s just spent the last half hour looking at. In comparison, Letisha’s sketch looks like it could have been made by Rubens.

Mr Vernon announcing a break obviously means that Rob gets to take a break too. While all the other amateur artists head downstairs to get something from the school canteen, Mark watches Rob slipping into a comfortable white dressing gown from behind his easel. He averts his gaze to the ceiling when he accidentally catches a glimpse of the side of a certain body part.

Mark doesn’t think he’d fare much better drawing Rob with clothes on, for drawing textures – especially soft ones – is something he’s really bad at. He’d only end up making the bathrobe in his drawing look like steel, or concrete. This is the main reason he left Rob’s face blank in all of his sketches: he doesn’t want to mess up the softness of Rob’s lips, or the twinkle in his eye.

Then again, how _do _you draw a twinkle in someone’s eyes? Perhaps some things will elude even the most professional artists, like the warm glow Mark feels when Rob suddenly looks at him. Would you depict it as an explosion of colours? Or as a red aura, blooming across Mark’s chest? He wishes he knew.

With everyone gone to get food, Mark, Rob and Mr Vernon are the only ones left in the atelier. Mark can see Rob – now completely covered up – turning to Mr Vernon. The drawing teacher is in the process of shoving an entire sandwich down his throat.

‘Mr Vernon, do you mind if I have a look at everyone’s sketches?’ Rob asks. Rob’s voice sounds cheeky and Northern and light; like he’s constantly on the verge of telling someone the punchline of a joke. ‘I’m a bit of an _artist _meself, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘Well, look at that!’ Mr Vernon says, bits of sandwich flying out of his mouth. ‘A fellow artist! In our midst! Knock yourself out, I say! Be inspired! Just make sure you don’t touch anything! I will have no students collaborating today!’ Mr Vernon thinks he has to shout even when he is not teaching.

‘Thank you, Mr Vernon.’

Rob slowly makes his way past each easel, stopping every now and then to give a certain artwork a longer look. Mark turns a furious red when Rob finally reaches _his_ easel: the one with the bare-bones artwork taped to it, missing face and all. Rob gives Mark’s artwork the same inspection Mark remembers from earlier that afternoon: narrowed eyes; hand stroking his chin. He nods and hums every now and then.

Meanwhile, Mark’s legs have turned into soup. Seeing someone naked is awkward enough, but seeing Rob wearing just a dressing gown is honestly just as worse, because it means the only thing Mark can stare at is Rob’s face. And while Rob has a seriously good body (artistically speaking), he has an equally good face. The sort of face you want to look at and snog all day.

Mark finds these feelings pretty confusing, because he has met plenty of guys with faces that he didn’t mind looking at and snogging all day. He met a handsome guy only recently. They got talking at the club, and one thing led to another and Mark ended up straddling the guy’s lap in the cab back home. They had fun. _He _had fun. But he never felt any butterflies while shagging this guy, and this is where Rob is different. Ever since Mark met Rob at the tram stop, his tummy has felt like he’s got a nest of butterflies living inside it. It’s not an entirely uncomfortable feeling. It feels . . . comforting. He actually finds himself actively seeking out the butterflies-living-inside-his-tummy feeling, because it’s one of the best sensations he can think of.

What he likes less, is the fact that he keeps shaking and that his legs feel like jelly. Every time he looks at Rob, naked or not, the world makes his body go upside down. He’ll draw a shaky line where he was supposed to draw a straight one or drop his piece of charcoal. He’ll mess up the sketch he spent five minutes working on, just because he accidentally looked at Rob looking back at _him_.

He’s known Rob only for a couple of hours, and yet Mark feels the intense need to get to know him. He’s pretty sure Rob feels the same way. It’s obvious in the way a red flush has crept across Rob’s cheeks. It’s obvious in the way Rob holds himself; trying to be casual, but secretly having to hide the fact that his hands are shaking.

Rob clearly fancies him back. This _should _make Mark feel less nervous because it means he no longer has to try so hard to get Rob to like him, but it actually makes him feel worse. Like Rob, his face has turned into one big tomato. He can’t stop shaking. Fancying someone is the _worst_.

‘Not bad, Mark,’ Rob says after what feels like a century of curator-looking-at-artwork. ‘Again – not as handsome as the real me. But a good effort. Well done, mate.’

‘T-thanks,’ Mark stammers, his gaze firmly trained on his shoes. He’s afraid that if he looks up, he’ll feel like staring at Rob’s soft lips again.

Rob seems to sense the tension, because he suddenly takes on a more serious tone. An almost apologetic one. ‘I’m sorry this is happening, by the way. Seriously. If I’d known you were going to be here . . . but I didn’t. I really didn’t. I’m sorry. I hope you’re okay with me being here, anyway.’

Mark fumbles with his hands. They’re covered in charcoal. ‘It’s not like there’s something I can _do _about it, is there, Rob?’

‘But if there was – if you could do something . . . would you send me away? Would you leave?’

At last, Mark dares to look up. He comes face to face with Rob’s eyes, and those soft lips underneath that he wishes he could draw. No, not _draw _– he wants to immortalise those lips in a kiss; a quick, impressionistic kiss that Mark would find impossible to sketch out. He barely knows a thing about this guy, and yet he wants nothing more than to see his body again in a place where they aren’t surrounded by students and teachers.

Mark shakes his head. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to go. Never. I’d – I’d ask you to stay until everyone has left and it’s just you and me. Because when we met this morning . . . I asked for your number for a reason, you know. I _drew _you for a reason. I drew you because I thought you looked so beautiful at the tram stop, and I asked for your number because you were the first person who’d ever shown an interest in me art outside of me lessons. I thought that made you special.’ Mark flushes. He’s pretty sure he’s just admitted fancying a guy he didn’t even know until a couple of hours ago. ‘So yes, I’m okay with you being here.’

‘Likewise.’ Rob smiles, and Mark smiles back. It’s one of those infectious grins that can light up an entire room. ‘I think you’re pretty special yourself, Mark.’

Rob means this from the heart. He _does_ think Mark is pretty special, for looking at Mark makes him feel all giddy inside in ways he’s never experienced before. Truth be told, he did consider leaving when he saw that Mark was one of Mr Vernon’s students, but then he remembered how happy he had felt when Mark gave him his number, and how beautiful Mark looked when he was drawing, and he decided to stay.

People seeing him naked doesn’t mean anything, anyway. His body is just a big mass of stuff keeping his soul in one place. He doesn’t care if people have seen his willy or if they think he looks like shit. It’s what happens_ inside_ his body that he finds much more interesting. And frankly, when he met Mark earlier today, he felt like his insides were doing cartwheels. It’s been ages since a boy made him feel like that.

‘Why do you do it, though?’ asks Mark, getting their conversation back on track. ‘You know, the modelling. Do you really have an interest in art?’

‘An interest in money, more like.’ Rob shrugs. ‘I do make art, but it’s more, like, modern crap. Paintings of aliens and stuff. The main reason I model is cos I need the fucking money, and I don’t mind getting me clothes off. Still wish I’d told you where I was going earlier, though. I told you I was going shopping! I don’t know what I was thinking.’

Mark makes a face. ‘Same. Perhaps if _I’d _told you I was going to attend drawing lessons, you showing up wouldn’t have been such a – well, you know. A surprise.’

‘A good one, though, I hope?’

‘Parts of it. Yes. Parts of it was good.’ Mark has to clear his throat when he accidentally pictures Rob naked again. He turns to his artwork, not noticing that Rob’s just given his backside a good once-over. ‘Unfortunately, me sketch isn’t so good. I know you said it was, but – but I can tell. It’s crap.’

Rob makes a disagreeing sound. ‘There’s only _one _thing I can see that’s slightly below average.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Well, for someone who’s just spent thirty minutes staring at me, you clearly weren’t paying any attention, is all I’m saying.’

‘What do you mean?’

Rob smirks. ‘I’m clearly much bigger than that, Mark,’ he jests, and Mark turns even redder.

Mark can feel Rob’s fingers grazing his palm then, and his own hand disappearing into Rob’s slightly bigger one. They squeeze at the same time, and somehow it feels immensely more intimate than seeing Rob naked ever did. When they let go just seconds later, Mark can see that Rob’s hand has come away with dark marks of charcoal; marks _he _left there just by touching him.

‘Just saying,’ Rob jokes. ‘Like, I’m at _least _five millimetres bigger. Perhaps six. You haven’t even _tried_!’

‘If y-you’re such a drawing expert, why don’t _you _f-finish me artwork?’ Mark says as challengingly as he dares. It doesn’t quite come out like he had intended, because it feels like he has several frogs stuck inside his throat.

Rob smiles, darting a quick glance at Mr Vernon. ‘I thought students weren’t allowed to collaborate?’

‘An extra pair of hands never hurt anyone.’

‘Good point.’ Rob makes a show of stretching his arms and legs. ‘Now – are you ready? You’re about to watch a master artist at work. Seriously. Get ready, Mark.’

Rob removes the piece of charcoal from Mark’s easel and adds three cheeky lines to a certain . . . underdeveloped section of Mark’s artwork, making Mark laugh. They share a delighted Look, and more butterflies follow. If Mark could paint this exact moment in time, he would do so with soft pastels and watercolours; but then his classmates enter the classroom, and Mr Vernon finishes his sandwich, and the burst of inspiration disappears.

He wouldn’t know how to put his feelings onto paper, anyway.

***

The rest of the lesson proceeds without a hitch. Rob’s moved his body into a different, harder pose. He’s now sat on the podium with his legs drawn to his chest, arms hugging his knees. It makes for a welcome change from the previous pose, which featured quite a lot of cock. It also helps that the pose looks like one Mark might twist himself into if he were ever feeling sad or depressed. You can’t really have any longing thoughts about that.

The students are still only allowed to use charcoal, Mark’s most dreaded medium. Even though Mark feels a lot calmer than he did when he first saw Rob naked, he doesn’t feel less nervous. His heart is still beating like mad. His lines are still wobbly. He still feels a little hot inside when he looks at Rob and realises that his sketches look nothing like him.

Rob, of course, is tranquillity himself. He’s used to this. He doesn’t mind that people are watching him. He doesn’t mind being naked. He reckons his body is just a vessel for moving and shagging and walking and sitting with, nothing more. Being naked is nothing to be ashamed of.

He does wish his current position wouldn’t stop him from seeing Mark, though. Before the break, he was able to look right at him and see every nervous gesture Mark was making with his hands . . . but now, he’s sat with his back to Mark, unable to see anything.

He wonders what Mark is doing now. Trying and failing to draw him, no doubt. Dropping another piece of charcoal. Squinting his eyes and biting his lip as he tries to get down the shape of Rob’s neck. Rob saw all of those little movements when he was in his previous position, and it made Mark look more human and alive than any of the other people in the world.

Mark Owen seems kind. Polite. Creative. Sweet, with a hint of insecurity running through him. Most people laugh at Rob when he explains that he poses nude to pay the bills, but Mark didn’t. Mark didn’t avert his gaze or pretended not to know him. Mark Owen kept looking.

Because it does happen, people pretending not to know him. People seem automatically wary when you tell them that you don’t mind getting naked. Mark doesn’t seem like the type of guy who’d judge. Mark probably hasn’t judged anyone, ever – apart from himself. Mark is the first student Rob’s _ever_ met who genuinely thinks he’s shit at drawing. Most students will always claim to be good at _one _thing, like drawing eyes or painting backgrounds, but not Mark. Mark cannot find beauty in anything he does. He could paint a perfect reproduction of _The Night Watch_, and he’d still think he’s crap. Is this a good trait to have? No, probably not. But it hasn’t stopped Rob from fancying him.

Rob fancies Mark desperately.

The lesson is nearing its end. At 6:30, Mr Vernon tells everyone to stop drawing and select _one_ sketch to be assessed and critiqued by him. It’s dark outside. While Rob puts on his white dressing gown one last time and takes a seat at Mr Vernon’s desk in the front of the atelier (pretending to be very interested in what everyone has produced), Mark miserably flicks through he sketches he made. They’re all shit.

Mark ends up pinning his second-to-last sketch to his easel. The proportions are terrible, but Mark’s pretty pleased with the way he drew the back of Rob’s head. He turns around his easel so that everyone else can see the artwork and prays for the best.

One by one, Mr Vernon visits everyone’s easels while the students _ooh _and _ahh _at everything he says. All the students end up getting mostly positive critiques like ‘Good lines!’ and ‘Very nice!’ He draws a curly correction mark on the artworks he likes best, which some students treat as if they’ve just been acknowledged by Michelangelo himself.

Then Mr Vernon reaches Mark’s easel. All his classmates look at Mark’s artwork as though they’ve just seen the world’s ugliest dog.

‘The lines need work,’ Mr Vernon sighs, and he moves on to the next easel. The lack of shouting and sentences-ending-in-exclamation-marks makes it obvious that Mr Vernon thinks the artwork is absolutely awful.

Mark’s heart sinks into his shoes. He is easily the worst artist to have ever lived. He will never get better, ever. He will always be making sketches with terrible proportions.

As Mr Vernon views Letisha’s amazing artwork next to him (‘Letisha! Your lines! They are amazing!’), Mark miserably sits down on his stool. He’s about to sink into another dark mood of why-am-I-not-good-enough when he catches Rob looking at him at the other side of the classroom. He holds up an encouraging thumb and smiles, and Mark’s head instantly feels lighter. 

_I’m really happy Rob is here, _he thinks to himself.

After everyone’s art has been looked at, Mr Vernon ends the lesson with some general critique. Mark feels like most of it is aimed at _him_. ‘Right! Next time! Better lines! Better proportion! Less manhandling our materials! Also! I will be leaving the atelier in less than a minute! This is due to personal reasons! I need someone to scrub the floor for me!’

Mark exchanges a look with Rob. A silent conversation seems to have taken place, for Mark suddenly raises his hand. ‘I – I don’t mind scrubbing the floor for you, Mr Vernon.’

‘I don’t mind either,’ says Rob. He shrugs when the students give him questioning looks. _A nude model? Doing cleaning? Impossible. _‘I’ve got to attend another lesson at seven, anyway. Might as well make meself useful.’

Mr Vernon raises his right eyebrow, a bushy caterpillar moving up his face. He makes a quiet judgment of Mark and Rob’s cleaning-up-an-art-atelier capabilities, then hands Mark a big bunch of keys. ‘Hand these back to the reception desk when you’re finished! And remember! Work on your proportion! Thank you, Malcolm! Goodbye!’

Mr Vernon leaves. His students are left to clean up their easels and materials on their own. Letisha ends up taking home a big folder filled with drawings that wouldn’t look out of place at the Royal Academy. More and more students leave until it’s just Mark and Rob, and that dirty charcoal-covered floor that clearly needs scrubbing.

Looking at the floor now, Mark has no idea how one might go about cleaning it. The floor has been tainted through years and years of having art materials thrown at it. Maybe Vernon misspoke, and he meant “vacuuming” instead of “scrubbing”.

Then again, it’s not as if Mark volunteered to stay because he really felt like cleaning. He stayed because of Rob, who is looking at him with that impossible-to-draw twinkle in his eyes, and that infectious smirk that Mark would like to kiss. Mark can’t remember ever seeing a drawing of two people falling in love before, but he reckons it’d look a lot like this exact moment here, with the light casting a perfect shadow on the floor as Rob makes his way slowly to Mark’s easel.

Mark gets back to his feet a little too quickly, making his stool sway behind him as Rob stops right in front of him. The distance between them – just a couple of inches – might be represented with a watercolour crackle of blue light, charging up the tips of Mark’s fingers.

The October day may have turned into night, but a picture of this moment wouldn’t be dark at all. It’d be vibrant and colourful, and Mark reckons it’d be the most beautiful picture of all. He can’t remember exactly when he fell in love with Rob, but he’s glad he did.

‘So.’ Rob smiles down at Mark, his crush. He’s still wearing “just” his dressing gown. ‘Today was interesting.’

‘Yes. Very,’ Mark says distractedly. He’s a little taken aback by how _different _Rob looks when he’s not surrounded by fellow students and Mr Vernon. He doesn’t even look like a model anymore, just a handsome guy Mark would love to get to know. ‘Very interesting. Yeah.’

‘Shame your teacher didn’t like your drawing that much.’

‘I know.’ Mark looks at the drawing stuck to his easel – the one Mr Vernon said “needed work”. ‘It’s like I don’t know what the human body looks like anymore.’

‘You could have another look at me now – if you want.’

Rob says this so _suddenly _and so _suggestively _that it makes Mark’s heart tumbles down his chest. He catches himself checking out the dressing gown hugging Rob’s body, and wondering if it feels as soft as it looks.

His gaze moves up, towards those twinkling green eyes that Mark feels like drowning in. He must have done the drowning already, because he feels absolutely breathless whenever Rob catches his eye.

‘When – when you say _look at you_ . . .’ Mark has to take a deep breath. His words never quite come out like he’d like them to, but ever since he met Rob he has been even more of a stammering mess than usual. ‘Do you m-mean the model you, or – or _you_? The _real _you?’ _The one I fell in love with at the tram stop_, Mark thinks, but doesn’t say out loud.

‘I mean the real me. The one no-one ever sees. Cos even if someone is really good at all this drawing stuff, they’ll probably never capture me soul. You know what I mean? They’ll never _really _know me. But I think you do. Seriously. You know me. I saw you looking at me earlier. _Really _looking. I’ve never had that before. You _saw_ me, Mark, and I fell in love with you the moment you looked away from me.’

By the time Rob finishes saying all this, his cheeks have turned a soft pink. Mark doesn’t know the right term for it.

‘So if you wanna see me again,’ Rob goes on, ‘I won’t stop you. Just as long as you don’t make a bad drawing of me willy afterwards.’

Mark laughs. A nervous laugh. They haven’t even _kissed _yet, and Rob’s already asking him if he wants to see him naked again. What is going _on_? Is this a hook-up? Is it a one-night-stand? Are he and Rob going to make love, and then never see each other again? He can’t remember the last time a boy made him feel so terribly confused. “I fell in love with you the moment you looked away from me” isn’t really something you say to a hook-up.

Still, Mark says yes. He puts his questions and doubts to one side. He nods and smiles; a light-up-a-room smile. ‘Yeah. I’d – I’d like to see your body again, if – if that’s all right.’

Rob smiles back. ‘Okay.’ He takes his time. He moves his hands to the front of his dressing gown and unties the ribbon that’s keeping it all together. His dressing gown falls open like a curtain, revealing his tattoo-covered tummy, and his prick underneath. Already, Mark is seeing details that he missed when he was drawing: the soft hairs on Rob’s chest; the tiny scar underneath his collarbone. Just that scar alone tells an entire story none of Mark’s artworks would ever have been able to capture.

Mark reaches out for the scar. His fingers are about to graze Rob’s skin when he drops his hand like a stone, looking mortified. He stammers, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t –’

‘I don’t mind,’ says Rob. He smiles encouragingly. ‘Go on – please.’

Mark swallows as he places his hand on Rob’s tummy. It feels warm. Soft. Even softer than what he thought Rob would feel like. He trails his index finger down the curve of his stomach and watches Rob getting hard at his touch.

Instead of moving down, Mark moves his hand up: past Rob’s nipples and the letters on his chest that spell out a French phrase Mark doesn’t recognise. He puts his fingertips to Rob’s lips, and he has to conclude that Rob’s lips are indeed the softest thing he’s ever felt, hands down.

Feeling Rob’s skin renders Mark speechless. He wants to say, “I want nothing more than to kiss you right now,” but when you’ve spent the past two hours _drawing_ things instead of talking about them, words can become a bit hard to find.

He looks up at Rob’s big green eyes, lost for words, and a silent exchange takes place. It’s an exchange impossible to put down in words, and even harder to paint using the existing colours in the spectrum. For when Rob dips down to kiss him then, slowly and gently, it feels like a rainbow exploding in Mark’s tummy.

Predictably, they quickly lose themselves in the kiss. Rob’s hands are everywhere Mark needs them to be: on his chest; on his hips; on the small of his back, squeezing his arse. Eventually they slip underneath the back of Mark’s jumper, where they leave a cold trail of goosebumps up and down Mark’s back.

The bunch of keys Mark had put in his trousers fall out of his pocket and land on the floor with a loud _clang_. In the kaleidoscope chaos, Mark still manages to find Rob’s cock, hard and pulsing and just the perfect size.

He asks for permission. Rob nods. He stammers _yes. God, yes_. Mark starts jerking him off. He treats it like a sketch, alternating soft strokes with hard, quick ones. Mark may not be that good at art, but he’s pretty good at jerking men off, and sinking on his knees to give them head as he does then.

The moment Mark goes on his knees on the floor, his trousers become covered in dirt. He doesn’t care. He takes off his jumper – revealing a tanned, skinny chest – and tosses it aside without a care in the world. He cares only about taking Rob inside his mouth, and Rob tugging his hair.

Is it the most romantic moment in history? No, probably not. Mark’s lips are covered in all sorts of stuff. He makes little choking noises whenever he takes Rob in deeper. His left hand is inside his own trousers, jerking himself off in time with the touches he puts Rob through. The door of the atelier is still open, turning their hook-up into something potentially dangerous.

Because that’s what it is, at the end of the day – it’s two people, hooking up. It’s a fling. Technically, you could probably call it a one-night-stand.

And yet. For a fleeting, passing second, when Mark stops what he’s doing to give Rob the most delighted smile, it genuinely feels as if they are lovers.

‘You enjoying yourself, mate?’

‘Absolutely,’ Mark trills, just as Rob smiles and wipes a smudge of charcoal off his cheek.

In that moment, Mark becomes convinced that they are, indeed, lovers. “Hook-ups” don’t smile at you like that. They don’t wipe a smudge of charcoal off your cheek. They don’t tell you that you’re the most beautiful creature they’ve ever seen, with your messy hair and that outrageous dolphin tattoo swimming across your tummy. The hook-ups Mark remembers having were rough and unremarkable and everything Rob is not.

Robbie Williams is so delightful and _real _that when Mark heads to the front of the atelier to grab a condom from his bag, he actually stops to pick up his sketchbook. He’s overcome with a sudden rush of creativity that he needs to get out of his system.

‘D’you mind if I –?’ Mark makes a sheepish face at his sketchbook. Yes, they’re in the middle of something. Yes, all the other students have already left. Yes, they’re supposed to make love. Yes, Mark has already taken off his clothes, wearing nothing but his white Calvin Klein boxers. Yes, he’s hiding quite an obvious hard-on that Rob can’t stop staring at, and there are stains of charcoal all over his skin. Yes, he’s supposed to be kissing the man in front of him – and yet the only thing Mark wants to do is to sketch him.

Seriously. Mark’s never wanted to draw anything more.

‘I’d really like to draw you, if that’s all right,’ Mark stammers. He feels embarrassed as fuck. What is he _saying? _‘I know it’s stupid. If you don’t want me to, I won’t. But. Yeah. I – I wanna draw you. D-do you mind?’

‘Do whatever you want, mate.’ Rob sits himself down on a desk filled with discarded sketches. He looks very naked without his dressing gown on. He took it off while Mark was giving him head. ‘S’long as I still get to make love to you, Markie, I don’t really care if you make an entire oil painting.’

Mark ignores the butterflies the words “Markie” and “make love” conjure up inside of him and settles down to sketch. He feels a burst of creativity unlike any he’s ever felt before. The sketch he’s making is not a sketch of a stranger at a tram stop or a naked canvas on a podium, but a potential friend. A lover.

As Mark draws Rob lazily jerking himself off in a moonlit atelier, he realises something. He realises that you should never draw for the sake of it. You shouldn’t draw everyone you see, praying that one day you’ll draw something that your teacher will approve of. You should make art because you want to, and because there are moments like this that deserve to be framed forever.

It’s a really fucking good sketch. The lines look solid and confident. Mark gets Rob’s proportions just right. The hand he ends up sketching – the hands currently in the process of jerking himself off – look like an actual hand, not a claw. The expression on Rob’s face is just right: a mix of pleasure and desire.

Ironically, the one sketch Mark will never be able to show to Mr Vernon turns out to be his best ever.

Mark doesn’t know how long he spends sketching. It could be anywhere between a minute or an hour, and Rob doesn’t care. He feels like this is the first time someone has drawn him for _him_. It feels oddly flattering.

Looking at Mark sketching him, Rob knows for certain that he’s never fancied anyone more. If it took two awkward chance meetings to fall in love with someone, then he’s glad those meetings happened. Rob really hopes he gets to have more moments like it.

Several minutes have passed. Mark looks at the sketch one last time. He’s pleased. It looks good. He’s done. As Mark snaps his sketchbook shut and returns with a condom in his right hand, he decides that he’s not going to show Rob the sketch. He decides to keep it to himself. Hopefully, he’ll be able to share the drawing with Rob months from now, when they’re reminiscing about when they first met.

‘Are you not going to show me the sketch?’ Rob asks. He sees Mark clutching a condom, but there’s no sketchbook in sight. 

Mark flushes. ‘Not yet. One day. Soon, I hope.’

‘One day? Does that mean there’ll be more of this? Not just me posing, but more – _us?’_

‘Maybe. Yes. If you – if you end up enjoying it.’

‘I’ve a feeling I will.’

Mark smiles. His body feels all upside-down and inside-out, and they haven’t even _done _anything. ‘In that case – yes. There’ll be more. More – us. Yeah.’

Mark doesn’t know what else to say, but he does not have to. Rob kisses him softly on the lips, and he finds himself wondering how he might draw himself now, nervously squeezing his Calvin Kleins down his hips. Would he draw himself bending over a dirty desk in an atelier, naked? Would the drawing be beautiful? Would it feature the empty wrapper on the floor? Would there be any words written underneath the sketch, like the important question Rob ask next, and the “yes” Mark breathes soon after? Would certain bits be left out, like Rob pushing his prick inside of him? Would it be black and white or technicolour, perfectly catching Mark’s skin flushing red?

Does it even matter?

The sex they have is the best Mark’s had for months. It isn’t perfect, and some of the strokes are off, but who cares? It feels heavenly. It feels like the sort of love you make to someone you’ve loved for years. It feels like a proper first time, with many more second and third times to follow.

How, Mark does not know. He didn’t know Rob until a couple of hours ago. They were strangers then, and they’re still strangers now. He doesn’t know Rob’s age. He doesn’t know where Rob comes from. He doesn’t know if Rob sleeps on the left or right side of the bed, or whether he prefers continental breakfasts over full English ones.

They don’t know a thing about each other, so why does Rob fucking him feel so good? How come Rob knows precisely when to pull out and push in again? How come Rob knows that Mark’s ear is a sensitive spot, and that Mark loves it when men pull his hair?

Is Mark asking too many questions here? Maybe. Attending life drawing lessons has taught him that you should always ask yourself questions about what you’re seeing and what is happening. He again finds himself asking the questions that plagued him at the beginning of the afternoon:

Where is Rob’s left hand in relation to his other one? Should he draw the bead of sweat trickling down his chest? Where do his legs meet up with the rest of his body? He didn’t know the answers then, but he does now. Rob’s left hand is on Mark’s cock, pumping it up and down, pre-cum tricking down his fingers. His chest is covered in sweat. His legs tremble as he pushes in-and-out of Mark hard; the pleasure rolling over him in such quick bursts that he can barely stay upright. 

Rob’s close, but Mark’s even closer. Two-seconds-away-from-coming close. Mark can’t stop talking. The words keep tumbling out of his mouth as Rob fucks him. They reach Rob’s ears in a clusterfuck of sounds that barely make sense. Rob even thinks he can make out Mark saying, “wish we could do this all day”, but then the words get carried away by the wind, and Mark speaks no more.

The only sound Rob can still drag out of Mark’s lips is a staccato of moans as he orgasms first. It’s one of those heart-stopping climaxes. It sounds dramatic, but it genuinely knocks Mark right out. His eyes fill with a blanket of stars, and he’s reminded of a Van Gogh painting Mr Vernon showed him once. He can’t remember the name of it. Rob fucked him so good that he can barely remember his own.

It takes Mark a couple of seconds to get back to his senses. The stars in his eyes fade, revealing the atelier in front of him in perfect perspective. He feels a desk underneath his palms. He smells art materials: charcoal and paint, with the unmistakable hint of _boy scent _lingering on his skin. Rob’s still inside of him, moving at an unbearably slow pace. Rob hasn’t come yet. He’s still – barely – hanging on.

Rob’s mouth is on Mark’s neck, showering it in a dozen kisses. ‘You all right?’

‘Y-yeah,’ Mark splutters. Back to stammering. ‘That was so – oh my God.’ He unconsciously pushes his arse back against Rob’s cock. _More_. ‘Oh fuck, it w-was so _good_, Rob. Oh God.’

Rob gradually picks up the pace again, making Mark let out a small whimpering noise. Mark has to hold on to the desk in front of him for dear life.

‘Best shag you ever had, Mark?’

‘Oh God. Yes.’

‘You want me to finish what we started?’

‘Y-yeah. Please – c-come for me. Come for me now.’

Two delightful minutes later, Rob comes. It’s pretty glorious. For a moment, Mark wonders if they’ve turned into works of art themselves, with their pastel-coloured skins filled with distinct red marks – and the thick cum Rob left on Mark’s back, like thick smears of paint. He reckons an artists’ rendition of this precise moment wouldn’t look out of place at an art gallery. It’d be curtained off, put in the back somewhere, covered in dust, but it’d still be a masterpiece. People would look at it and think, _I want this too. _

Mark has been thinking about art all evening, but he’s never felt more appreciative of art than at this very second, looking over his shoulder to see Rob smiling back at him, his entire body basking in sex afterglow. It’s another discovery he’s made: art isn’t about what other people think of it.

It’s how it makes you _feel_.

***

Five minutes have passed since they made love. They’ve cleaned up, but they don’t look that much cleaner: there are charcoal marks all over Rob’s skin. Mark’s own hands have dark smudges on them. Mark has put his clothes back on, but Rob is still wearing his dressing gown. He genuinely can’t remember where he put the clothes he was wearing before he stripped off.

Now, they’re snuggling together on the floor that Mr Vernon said needed scrubbing.

‘I really enjoyed tonight,’ Mark says, his fingertips tracing circles on the floor, waiting to find the courage to take Rob’s hand in his. He feels a tiny bit guilty for not cleaning the atelier as they promised, but he’s not sure if his teacher would really notice. It’s only going to get dirty again.

Besides – he rather likes the idea of someone finding the charcoal handprint he left on the desk ten minutes ago. ‘I can’t remember the last time I – you know. Everyone else I’ve been with lately . . . but not you,’ Mark adds, his sentences half-finished. His mouth still has to catch up with his feelings. ‘I’m really glad we met, Rob. I really like you.’

‘Same here, mate.’ Rob looks at Mark, with his light-up-a-room smile and his long hair flopping over his forehead, and he makes the same discovery Mark made earlier. A discovery about art, but also about Mark himself, whom he fancies more than he has ever fancied anyone. ‘I like you, Mark Owen. I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone. And not just because you’re a seriously good shag, but because you’re just so fucking_ sweet_. It’s a bloody gift, mate. I don’t know how you do it. I’ve never met anyone who stopped to talk to me during one of these lessons before. You _saw _me. I think that makes you the most special person in the world.’

Mark flushes. ‘We’re talking about each other like we’ve been together for ages.’

‘I know. But I can’t help that’s how I feel. It’s why you care so much about art, right? Art is about feelings, innit? It’s about sharing what’s inside your heart and stuff. But when two artists get together – that’s when you start seeing the _really _good things.’ Rob meets Mark’s hand edging towards him, and their fingers interlock. Just like lovers. ‘I reckon we’d look like an amazing pastel painting, you and me.’

Mark starts beaming. ‘That’s what _I_ think too! Oh – what’s that period in history when everyone was making really soft artworks? You know, with the pastel colours and lots of curves and everyone was dressed really nicely?’

‘I haven’t a clue, mate. Why?’

‘Because how I feel when I’m with you. Like I’m inside a pastel painting in our very own period of art.’

Rob chuckles as he squeezes Mark’s hand, making Mark feel warm all over. Indeed, it feels like they’ve been together for ages. Rob doesn’t know how, or why, but he reckons it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes the point of looking at a painting is that you don’t always need to have the answers to everything.

‘I like the sound of that. Yeah. Our own period of art.’ Rob kisses Mark’s cheek; a soft peck compared to all the previous ones, but just as good. ‘Let’s hope it lasts.’

‘Of course it will,’ says Mark. ‘All the best art does.’


End file.
